What does your BRAND cost?

During a recent conversation with one of my friends in college, a discussion on blogs came up, I went ahead telling her about blogging but then she replied immediately about the bad of it. She told me that a few days back she did receive a link to blog where the content was inappropriate and thus she just feels blogging is a waste of time and a means to post non-sense. Does this happen to brands also? How far can a consumer go on to accept or reject a product or service with just a single first hand experience or as in the case above not even without experience but with a little buzz or view? many questions would arise if this is taken to real life product purchases or service availabilities. If this holds well, then it is disastrous for products that are new in the market or to a certain extent it becomes very difficult to establish reputation. And once the worth of a brand is proven then there are many factors associated to it. Or it can be said that the brand has an increment in its value. The more the brand value goes up, it adds to the overall strengthening of the firm associated with the brand. Sometimes the value of the brand surpasses that of the firm that owns it or even the product category.

An orator at a presentation had once told that brands become great and eternal when they either become a verb or a noun. Do you Yahoo! Just Google it buddy! Pass a Coke (an order for a cold drink)! Get a Xerox! and so on. Brands have become the a part of the consumer glossary. These factors add up to give high value to any brand and the same is reflected during mergers & acquisitions. When major companies are up for sale the price that is quoted is made up of very little of the tangible asset of the company rather a very large part of that price tag is fixed for the brands that it owns. Its the brands that create goodwill for a company. Now brands are not necessarily products or services, they can be even people, very evidently how the Beckhams have done it. Not that they are for sale, but then the price shows when they are hired for ads and commercials or at the time when they are associated to various products.

Things come at a price and its typically brands that can command a desired price, premium pricing as is termed in marketing.